This article is an attempt to deconstruct the history of economics in nineteenth-century France into a discursive history of mutual dependence of knowledge production and social practices. The Revolution of 1789 granted, albeit limitedly, political rights and raised the issue of economic inequality, the imbalance of which is encapsulated in the concept of the “social question.” The liberal economic response to this was the moralization strategy, whereby the ultimate responsibility was transferred to individuals. During the Restoration years, neither liberal economic regime nor governmentality were consolidated, resulting in a weak modern state. During the July Monarchy, scientific research on society, economics, and wealth was diversified into a variety of “social scientific” endeavors. While the rediscovery of Malthusianism rekindled liberal economics briefly in the Second Empire, the intervention of the population phenomenon known as “depopulation” completed the transition to “national-social state.” This history testifies to the co-production of two central dispositifs, economic knowledge and the modern state.